Horror Bites - Blind Eye

A second of  a new fortnightly challenge hosted by Laura Jamez over on her site, Office Mango called Horror Bites. This image spoke volumes to me, and took me a while to gather how I wanted to present it, reflecting elements of my own childhood within it.

No-one in the street knew who called them, but the Risley’s were suspected. They’d all known things weren’t right; the mother had been seen sporting black-eyes often enough. But it wasn’t done to wash your dirty linen in public, not in this street, in this tiny corner of elite suburbia. Although that night everyone had heard the screams.

Before then the children hadn’t been considered. They were seen playing, sometimes with others, and they’d seemed okay - a bit skinny maybe, a little withdrawn, but nothing to cause concern, no sign they’d been affected, at least not publically anyway, out in front of people where it mattered. Although no-one had known there was another child.

After the police arrived an ambulance had been called, kicking off a three-ring-circus of flashing lights. No one liked it, but it drew them outside where they gathered on their perfectly manicured lawns to bear witness.

The children were there, huddled together as their father was brought out of the house in handcuffs. Then their wailing mother appeared, and there were audible gasps when a blood covered bundle in her arms was spotted.

Everyone wanted to believe it was a new born, maybe a delivery gone wrong, but their guts told them otherwise as they watched the medics rush over and lay the little body out on the lawn, displaying what they’d all missed – a small child of two or three.

Even in the poor light the damage was visible, the contorted limbs causing some of the neighbours to cry out; the stream of blood from various locations detailing the torture. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the street when a sheet was pulled up over him, crying for the shame of their ignorance as much as for the cruelty the child had endured.

300 Words